Having been doing the mom and volunteer thing almost exclusively for the previous twenty years, a head shot is not something that has seemed a worthwhile investment of time or money up to now. Is that a thing people have lying around?

But now, I needed a head shot. ASAP, please.

The need for a head shot at a moment’s notice seems emblematic of the level of preparedness I currently possess for the things that are happening around here.

In case you are not my FB or IRL (in real life) friend who has already heard my announcement, I recently signed a contract with Abingdon Press to publish my devotional book in February 2018! I KNOW, RIGHT??? In fact, considering you are a person who on occasion comes here to read my words, I feel bad for not having shared this news with you earlier since this would not be happening without you. This is no reflection of my love for you and I promise not to keep things from you in the future.

After 11 years of playing around with blogging, I gathered enough words, met with a couple of publishers, and now find myself with a grown-up book contract. And requests for head shots, marketing plans, video introductions, catchy quotables for memes and an author Q & A. To say that I feel a bit in over my head would be an understatement. Overwhelmed, but deeply grateful and extremely excited! God is good!

(The final manuscript is due on March 15, so I would appreciate your prayers for these next few weeks, praying friends.)

Along with the guidance I am getting from the lovely people at Abingdon Press, I also decided I need some professional help with my website. Along with writing projects and upcoming retreats, I recently started a life coaching practice that I want to tell people about here, so it is time for a major overhaul by someone who knows what they are doing.

So faithful friends, stay tuned! Things will be quiet around here for a bit, but I will be coming back with a brand new website soon. It will have buttons to click on, places to be on my mailing list and all manner of official writer, speaker, life coach things!

In the meantime, please enjoy my very grown up and professional looking head shot. This required a stylist to dress me, a hair and makeup professional to groom me, and a very patient photographer who works miracles with some kind of photo editing software. It takes a village!

Funny people enjoy having me around because I will laugh at almost anything.

When my girls were in high school, they were both deeply involved in the theater department. Because dramatic teenagers are my absolute FAVORITE, I took my role as drama mama seriously and spent almost as much time as they did hanging around the performing arts hallway at Chantilly High School. Delight is not a strong enough word to describe the way I still feel about the kids, parents and teachers who were part of that season of my life.

In spite of the fact I proved quite useful to have around for selling tickets, gathering costumes or locating a full size coffin for a prop (true story,) I was occasionally run off the premises during rehearsals because I could not contain my laughter. During the final stages of preparation for their performance, although the student actors appreciated my encouragement, their teacher accused me of hampering the process by laughing at their antics too soon.

“They aren’t funny yet! Quit laughing at them!”

In case you feel sorry for me, you will be happy to know that when opening night arrived, my obnoxiously loud laughter was once again welcome, encouraged and appreciated. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Mrs. Johnson, we could hear you laughing!” as I congratulated students on another fabulous show. I’m not sure it is a marketable skill, but having a distinctive laugh has served me well as an enthusiastic drama mama and head cheerleader for the artsy kids.

Performers thrive on the positive reaction of their audience. Whether tears of tenderness, a gasp of surprise, a hearty belly laugh or the coveted standing ovation at the final bow, when the cast and crew experience evidence they have connected with their audience, the many hours of hard work are worth the time and effort.

This morning, I was reading Galatians and came across the following familiar verse about choosing our audience:

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. Galatians 1:10 (NIV)

Since my youth group days, I have heard repeated counsel to “perform for an audience of one” instead of seeking to win the approval of people. As a person who thrives on the accolades and affirmation of others, I often find this easier said than done. My love language is words of affirmation and sometimes I find God’s voice to be frustratingly quiet. Like many of the teachings of my faith, I understand and acknowledge the wisdom behind Paul’s advice to the Galatians, but find I often struggle to translate what I know into how I feel or how I choose to act.

However, one of the gifts of middle age is a gradual lessening of the hold other people’s approval has over me. Perhaps this progress is due to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in my life, but I suspect from talking to my other fifty something friends that it is also a function of exercising my “I just don’t give a ____” muscle. (Feel free to fill in the blank with whatever word makes you feel a little sassy and irreverent.)

As I revisited the verse from Galatians I referenced above, I saw it differently through the lense of time and experience. Instead of a sigh of frustration over how far I fall short of this ideal, I thought instead about my drama mama years and what the word “audience” means for me now.

Yes, I am about to compare enthusiastic, incredibly biased drama mamas to God. Work with me here…

Is there a more perfect audience than a delighted parent?

In case you have not had the distinct pleasure of sitting in a middle school, high school, college or professional theater watching your child do what they love best, the answer is an emphatic NO, there is no more perfect audience than a delighted parent. A whole auditorium of delighted parents is even better.

What if God is just that crazy about us?

What if the God who created the universe is sitting on the front row as we bravely step out of our comfort zone into the spotlight of our passion holding His breath, leaning into our every word and silently cheering us on until the moment He can jump to His feet cheering?

What if God wants us to succeed with every fiber of His being?

Perhaps we are encouraged to play to an audience of one instead of to the masses because the writers of scripture know God is our absolute, unabashedly, unashamedly, completely biased biggest fan. God knows how hard we worked. He knows how nervous we are. He knows how much we want to succeed. God sees us and He is so FOR us.

Without meaning to do so, I think I have often seen God as a skeptical critic waiting for me to fail rather than a delighted parent wanting me to succeed. Scripture is full of evidence to the contrary, so I have decided to change my mind.

There is no more perfect audience than my delighted Abba Father. He is crazy about us.

Since I strapped it on my wrist, I have logged over 73,000 steps, primarily in my house. The most entertaining thing about the Fitbit so far has been the reaction of my elderly dog, Dobby. For those of you unfamiliar with a Fitbit, you can set up the watch-like receiver to notify you at the end of each hour when you have not achieved your hourly step minimum. What this looks like at my house is me jumping out of my chair once an hour and marching around in circles with my dog following behind me wondering where we are going.

Because he is 14 years old and I am young and spry, I often catch up to him as we round a corner. And then, because he is mostly deaf, I startle him. Occasionally, he takes a shortcut through the kitchen and takes the lead.

My husband and I find this endlessly amusing. Clearly, it is time for all of us to go back to work because Dobby is confused and exhausted.

In addition to using a Fitbit to get my butt moving, I am also jumping on another popular bandwagon this January. For the last couple of years, I have joined many of you in choosing one word to be my “theme” word for the year. One proponent of the One Word calls it the “un-resolution” and says:

Our resolutions seldom work because they are based on the type of person we’re tired of being rather than who God wants us to become. Plus, resolutions can be “broken,” leaving no room for the process of growth. What if our hopes for the year ahead centered instead on who God wants us to become, and the transformation process?

In 2016, my word was Brave: no surprise to those of you who read my blog regularly. Brave was my goal, my focus, the object of my passion and curiosity. Throughout the year, personally and professionally, I considered what it might mean to be brave and what, if anything, my faith in God had to do with it. In moments of choice, I viewed my options through the lense of the word Brave.

Like this:

We call our fourteen-year-old Bichon by the name Dobby. If you are not a Harry Potter fan, Dobby is the name of one of the beloved house elves in the popular book series about the wizard world. He is one of the heroes in the story. We got our Dobby when my girls were five and seven, near the beginning of our family’s love affair with these books. We started reading the books out loud to them when they were new readers, but they quickly graduated to exploring the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione on their own. When the last several volumes were released, we began ordering two copies because our family of four could not possibly bear to take turns with only one book.

Bad mom alert: I may or may not have suggested to one of my girls that they could skip their homework to read Harry Potter so that I could get my hands on one of our copies more quickly. Luckily, the books were usually released in the summer.

To further convince you of our Harry Potter obsession devotion, last year over the girls’ Christmas break from college, we re-watched all eight Harry Potter movies as a family. In case you are wondering, 19 hours and 40 minutes is how long it takes to complete this movie marathon and no, we did not do it in one sitting.

When Universal Studios in Orlando opened the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in 2010, our family was understandably intrigued. We vowed to go, but life had gotten particularly busy with high school activities and dreams of college by then, so we never made it.

Until last weekend.

So why am I telling you all of this? Don’t worry, gentle reader. Although I know you love me, I promise I am not going to subject you to a slideshow of our family vacation (ok, maybe a few photos but only enough to demonstrate my point. You are welcome.)

I am thinking about the word delight today and I wanted to paint a picture for you. As I began to write this post, I sat quietly and tried to conjure up an image of the word delight and this is the what came to mind. Continue reading →

I just scared my elderly dog. Thank goodness there are no hidden cameras in my house because I may have just yelled a few PG-13 R-rated expletives at the top of my lungs in my living room less than 24 hours after returning home from a Christian writers and speakers conference where I was mostly on my best behavior.

Here is one definition of humility: realizing you sent the unedited version of your book proposal to the publishers who kindly agreed to further consider your book. Luckily, the unintended file was attached to a gracious thank you note. The second thank you note, the one with the correct, edited version of the book proposal attached- the version which my brilliant real life editor friend painstakingly helped me craft- was a bit shorter and included a self-deprecating joke referencing jet lag after a one hour flight. Ha Ha, aren’t I just the silliest?

And I was feeling so fancy. Sigh…

In spite of this latest foible, I am for the most part flying high after my attendance at She Speaks this past weekend. In addition to the exciting opportunity to meet with two publishers, I attended a number of informative and beautifully presented workshops about writing and speaking taught by some of my favorite Christian authors. The quality of the conference was top notch and I gained a multitude of ideas about how I can make my writing and speaking better.

For instance, when you begin with a paragraph which draws your reader in and makes them want to read more, this technique is called A Hook. I have found in the past, dear reader, you particularly enjoy my stories about the times when I do things which scare the dog, thus my willingness to share my epic failure above. You are welcome.

Beyond the high quality training I received, my favorite part of the conference was three days of uninterrupted quality time with my writing sisters. These brave, talented, passionate women flew in from all over the world to learn more about how to spread God’s love and their message of hope. I met new friends and dug deeper with some “old” friends who are part of my online community. We also laughed A LOT. Laughing is my favorite, as you can see in this photo of my squad. Continue reading →

In person, I frequently use humor to connect with other people. It brings me great joy to make people laugh and I have occasionally been known to go a little too far past the line of propriety in my attempts to produce a chuckle or giggle from my listeners. My favorite people are those with whom I can be silly, including my frequently inappropriate extended family. I love to laugh and many find me to be an appreciative audience because I will laugh at almost anything. My dependability as an enthusiastic audience member is probably why they asked me to be Drama Booster President.

Because I tend to write about more serious matters, my blog posts don’t always reflect my love of humor. Over the years, however, I have occasionally found myself at the computer in a “bit of a mood” and the resulting posts are a little more unpredictable. The best ones, of course, are the times I am making fun of my own foolishness.

In honor of April Fool’s Day, my little Friday Five community is celebrating laughter (and perhaps fools) with 5 Laugh Out Loud’s. I decided to share a few old posts where I found myself giggling at my silliness while I was writing.

Here are 5 Times I Made Myself (and possibly you) Laugh:

Speaking of Struggling… Speaking of my own foolishness, this is the pitiful tale of the time I tried to move an air hockey table on a wet floor in flip flops by myself. And how the entire debacle was ALL my husband’s fault. And how I couldn’t be blamed for my bad behavior because I was hungry. Learn from me, gentle reader. Do as I say, not as I do. I still have flashbacks every time I go down in the basement. But my knee is fine now, thank you for asking.